Finally! A showdown between Thanos and the Avengers! Well, the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy, to be more precise. The teams have finally tracked down the Mad Titan and they must find a way to stop him and the man made Cosmic Cube that he has in his possession.

All the science behind what the cube actually was interested me greatly. Of course humans can’t really recreate THE Cosmic Cube, but I was very impressed by the substitute that was put together, and then by Tony Stark’s plan to defeat it.

The battle against Thanos was great. It really was. It looked good, the motivation behind it was good, and basically it was just good. But, this issue affirmed my complaints from issue 7: This book was made to bring the Guardians of the Galaxy in front of the casual fan. This book was meant to bring in fans from the movie as it featured the team from Joss Whedon’s epic film, but it actually was a jumping off point to bring the Guardians in and then spin them off into their own book. I mean, the last page even hypes the new book by Bendis and Steve McNiven that’s coming in February as part of Marvel NOW. It was a great business strategy by Marvel. Well done. And the story from issue one until now was fairly good, but it was really just eight issues of making the Guardians look good so that they’ll sell the new series when Bendis moves over to that after he leaves the Avengers. There’s nothing wrong with using a book to hype another book, but I wish they made the Avengers look at least equally as good as Star Lord and his crew. If anything, I feel like the only Avenger that came off as strong was Iron Man, who is rumored to join the Guardians in their new book.

The next issue will feature a line up change and I’m a little bummed about that too. This book was meant to feature the team from the cinematic universe so that fans of the movie that want to get into the comics will have an easy way in. Unless they’re planning on introducing the new team members in Phase Two, the premise of this book is void and it’s just another book in the already large sea of Avengers titles. I love the Avengers and all, but I might have to start picking and choosing which ones are the best and only get those because I might not have it in my budget to get every book with ‘Avengers’ in the title anymore.